Legion of Falling Stars
by Alex Fry
Summary: The crew of the Outlaw Star and my very own Drax molTare team up to save the world. If it's any good, tell me. If it's pants, tell me...
1. Chapter 1 MolTare Erda

Drax Elite molTare Erda:  
  
It starts, as so many situations in my life seem to, with a wild race against time to save a life.  
  
In this case, it was not to be; I burst through a large and ornately-decorated pair of bronze doors just in time to hear a shot and see a body thrown, stilling, to the ground. I was late. Late, and as a result so was another - albeit in a different way - one upon whose shoulders the fate of worlds should have rested.   
  
The killer holstered his weapon, nudged the body with a foot. 'You? Beat me? I think not. Especially since ye're dead. Hah - try stopping me like that, girlie!'  
  
And with that he left through a smaller door I had not previously noticed, leaving me alone with the perforated body of the Ctarl-Ctarl female, Aisha Clanclan.  
  
Checking in a perfunctory manner for surveillance devices - and activating a standard white-noise generator for safety's sake - I hurried over to the forlorn shape lying in the middle of the room, sparing only the briefest of glances at the room itself. It was, as far as I could see, hardly standard for the dining hall of a baronial castle - even if it was accepted that this was an Eya planet, with all the penchant for mixing gadgetry and mumbo-jumbo that implied, there was still some very wierd kit lying around the place. Something tried to get itself noticed, but among the clutter it was quite impossible to make out what. Nothing important, in all likelihood; I turned my attention back to the body on the floor.  
  
Sheathing my needlegun pistols, I deactivated the hardshell combat armour surrounding me as I dropped to my knees to better make a close examination of the wounds. N-lock armour material collapsed inwards upon itself, storing away in a belt unit all the parts of my apparel which ensure I am more of a walking fortress than a bullet-absorber, revealing my jet-black stealth gear underneath.  
  
I rolled Aisha onto her back, winced at the wounds I saw.  
  
'By all that's holy...'  
  
What had he shot her with? I had heard only the one gunshot, yet the cat looked as if a Gatling gun had gone to work on the entire right side of her abdomen.  
  
'Why'd you go and do it, girl? Yes, you're strong and all, but to attack this one, alone... why couldn't you have at least waited ten seconds longer? Why aren't the rest of your crew with you? Why...why...  
'...Why are you still breathing?'  
  
Bloody hell! She's alive! Words could not express the fierce rush of exultation that flooded through me as the chest of the catgirl rose and fell, ever so slightly but definitely there - I had to hold back a cry of victory at the sudden realisation that the situation could yet be saved. Aisha lived!  
  
Mind you, I added to myself, these people had better have some damn' good medical technology on hand, or things may yet turn pear-shaped. Ms. Clanclan was not in the best of shape. Time, obviously, was of the essence.  
  
'Let's get you out of here, missy.'  
  
I lifted her as gently as I possibly could, avoiding jarring or shaking the tenuous thread of life still clinging to its abode for fear that I might unwittingly dislodge it forever, and made for the door with all sensible haste.  
  
'And just where do ye think ye're going, pray? I think ye'll find that I killed that wee beastie, in defense o' me own life indeed, and I'm having the pelt from 'er.'  
  
I froze in my tracks. Two short steps brought me to a low divan-like thing along one side of the hall; I laid Aisha upon it and turned to face the speaker with an expression on my face that spoke as eloquently as I could make it of future sufferings. Perhaps it would be best if this individual believes her to be dead, I considered.  
  
'I think not... matey... I'm taking her for a decent burial. I doubt you'll be needed at the funeral this time. You won't have much choice about attending yours, of course - and that might be nearer to now than you think.'  
  
'Ye talk a good fight, laddie, but I've no time for this. Go away, and leave me m'little trophy behind before I decide to bag another, ye get ma drift?'  
  
He fingered the butt of the hideous firearm in its holster at his side, his other hand making skinning motions as he grinned at me. Seems I'd got myself into another situation. Oh well, that's why I'm armed. I focused my gaze on a patch of empty air just above his left (pointy) ear and replied:  
  
'An interesting proposal, my Gaelic-stylee acquaintance. But my counter-proposal is: get your arse out of here at once, before I do something irreversable to the flow of universal events by obliterating you.'  
  
His grin grew wider. Then it dropped off his face, as he realized that not a trace of bravado had coloured my voice. He pulled the weapon he carried out of its holder in one angry motion, sighted along it towards me. 'Ye've made me angry now. Get gone, or I'll kill ye.'  
  
'Fine.'  
  
I reactivated my armour suit, pulled one of my own guns.  
  
'We'll see who sinks first, hmm, elf-boy?'  
  
The blond-haired owner of the room in which I stood took a step back in surprise at witnessing the sudden change from black-clad, cocky housebreaker into black-armoured, ominous death-on-legs. For a moment he looked completely nonplussed, then looked down again at the gun that he had let fall to his side. He raised it, took careful aim at my chest. Now, I thought, I find out just how good that gun of his really is...  
  
He pulled his trigger, and the world as far as I could see it turned momentarily white as every optical pickup in the suit helmet overloaded all at once. While everything was thus overilluminated, I heard several sharp 'spang!' noises from about my chest level as nasty little shredder bullets bounced off of the N-lock suit in several directions.  
  
Obviously, then, that gun is a piss-poor peashooter when it comes to my armour. I said as much to him, noting with delight that one of the bullets had ricocheted past his ear and removed a neat little chunk of his earlobe.  
  
'Not good enough, blokey. Current score: me one, you nil. And now it's my turn;'  
  
I pulled the trigger on the needlegun in my hand once. It was on full power and minimum spread, so an intense beam about a centimetre in diameter lanced from its emitters and caught the little finger on his left hand at the bottom joint. The finger disappeared in a sudden flash of blood, and elf-boy screamed.  
  
'A little something to remember these by; the death you caused, and the death that could have been yours. Nobody crosses Erda mol Tare.'  
  
I flicked the power level on the gun's control panel to minimum, pointed it at his head and fired once more. A wide beam with the force of a smashing uppercut caught the baron underneath the chin and sent him flying back into a pile of electrical circuit boards.I'll give him this: the lad's got strength in him. He picked himself up almost at once, cradling the hand from which his little finger was gone.  
  
'Take the cursed corpse then. But I'll no' forget ye, laddie. An' don' think I'll look down kindly on ye... when I become a god! Bwahahaha!'  
  
Elf-boy fled the room, mocking (or possibly merely insane) laughter floating back from the room through the smaller door out of which he had come and to which he had returned. For a brief, irrational moment I seriously considered leaping to the door, blasting it out of the way and dealing out some lessons in respect, molTare style. No: killing him was most likely not to be my job, and besides that a more urgent problem lay horribly injured on the divan where I had laid her. I returned to her and picked her up as before.  
  
'First stop for you, the nearest hospital. Then... I'm going to have a word with your shipmates...'  
  
I could have sworn, just for one moment, that her eyes opened and she looked directly at me. 


	2. Chapter 2 Gene

Disclaimer: If yez think I own, or think I think I own, any of the Outlaw Star crew, you're badly wrong. I'm not worth suing anyway.  
  
Yep, I'd completely forgotten about this. Don't know what brought it back to mind. Enjoy chapter two, and feel free to tell me what you think.  
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The crew of the spacegoing vessel 'Outlaw Star' - those as could leave the ship - gathered around the hospital bed where Aisha lay. Various tubes and hookups connected her mangled body to the complicated-looking machinery which was going about healing her massive wound - her hand, the only unencumbered part of her body, was firmly held by Jim Hawking.  
  
Being as she was a member of a race whose skills in that area are legendary, her healing process was moving along at a stunning rate, but the magnitude of the damage done was such that she would not be moving around much for some time.  
  
Gene Starwind, outlaw extraordinaire and serial bankrupt, turned to the room's other occupant. The strange man who had brought Aisha into the hospital and called in Gene and Jim was sitting in one corner of the room, an individual thoroughly unremarkable in appearance from his short brown hair to his black reefer jacket and jeans; his eyes were closed and his head bowed, and he was fidgeting with a matte-black torc at his neck.  
  
'What was it?'  
  
The stranger was silent for a moment, then spoke to the floor.  
  
'I've never seen its like before. Small-bore pistol weapon that somehow fired a composite shot with enough power to rip a target's torso apart: shouldn't even have been physically possible. I'm not entirely sure it was physically possible, but that needs closer examination than I was able to carry out. The wielder shot her with it when she confronted him at his residence, a laboratory just outside the limits of this city - I'm afraid I don't know its name - and threatened him in some way.'  
  
'Threatened? Why? About what?'  
  
'That much I don't know. I was supposed to be preventing the confrontation and finding out what it was going to have been about had it taken place, but unfortunately I arrived too late. The dude thought she was dead, and so I got her away from him and brought her here. I want to find out what's going on, and she knows. I'm sure of it.'  
'And the man who shot her?'  
  
'Never seen him before, although his race is familiar. I think he's a subset of the Eyii overrace - pointy ears, tall and thin, probably some sort of psionic ability - and he has a bad approach to diplomacy and a distinct Scottish accent.'  
  
'Sounds like a Lanreau to me. They're not nice at all, and their names sound like a bad cough.'  
  
'Hm. I'd more or less designated him "Elf-boy". He didn't take kindly to it, as I recall.'  
  
'They're touchy. There's a question I'd like answered though: Who the hell are you?'  
  
'Ah. One of the difficult ones.'  
  
The black-clad stranger looked up, opening his eyes, and met Gene's gaze. His eyes were as feline as the closed eyes of the girl lying comatose on the bed, and had obviously seen far too much in his lifetime.  
  
'My name is Erda; I'm a Cultine of the Tare clan. MolTare Erda. And, strictly speaking, I don't belong in this universe. I'm an Elite in the Drax Legion, a soldier of the timelines - I'm sent to differing threads of reality to ensure events turn out as they should, mostly thoroughly informed as to what's going to be necessary. In this case, I know very little except for my original brief, which was to save the catgirl - a mission I nearly failed miserably.  
'Anyway. I'm armed and armoured in a manner which would make a Star Destroyer quail, and I want to get to the bottom of this mess.'  
  
'Star Destroyer?' Jim piped up from Aisa's bedside.  
  
'Large, unpleasant space vehicle. Not in this reality, though.'  
  
Gene spoke up again.  
'Do you actually believe all of that? They've got a great mental ward here, you know.'  
  
MolTare sighed.  
'This happens every single time. What happened to the good old days where everyone was credulous?'  
  
His hand dropped to the huge 'buckle' on the belt he wore, and pressed something. Gene stared in mild shock and growing apprehension at the sight of an artificial carapace of black armour-suit enclosing the rising figure of the self-proclaimed Drax, who was quite suddenly holding a staff some five and a half feet long with ten-inch blades of faintly glowing metal. Laying one blade lightly against Gene's throat, he softly asked,  
  
'Was there something?'  
  
Gene could only stammer in response.  
  
'Hm. Maybe it's you who's in need of some rest in a padded cell. You seem a tad wound up... now, to business. I intend to sort things out; are you going to help?'  
  
Gene merely glowered, but Jim spoke up again.  
'You're going after the man who shot Aisha? I'm with you, even if you are crazy. Gene?'  
  
Gene looked sour, massaging his throat where the blade had rested, but nodded.  
'I'm with Jim. You may be a nutter, but if anybody ever shoots the cat it's going to be me.' 


	3. Chapter 3 MolTare Erda

Disclaimer: Just in case you weren't paying attention in the first two chapters: NOT MINE! Outlaw Star people are NOT MINE! Right? Right.  
  
Short chapter this time, but it fits in what needs fitting in. Also, I'm dreading waking up Aisha 'cos I'm probably going to mischaracterise her horrendously.  
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Drax Elite molTare Erda:  
  
Back on the Outlaw Star, I filled Suzuka in on the situation. Melfina was listening in as well from the confines of her column. I had left Jim and Gene at the hospital with Aisha, having ascertained that the combination of Ctarl-Ctarl healing and decent hospital equipment would have the young lady back on her feet within days.   
  
'And I'm afraid that simple assassination won't suffice for this bloke - the finger I shot off of him was regrowing even before I left, and I'm sure he's got some tricks up his sleeve.'  
  
Suzuka looked puzzled.  
'If he's dead, regeneration won't be a problem, surely? Nothing can heal death.'  
  
I shook my head. The number of places I've been, I've seen some hefty tech, and death can be healed.  
'Have you ever heard of the Boardies? I'm a member of their Fleet from time to time... they developed a system some months ago known as the REsidual SPirit Advance-Warning Node or RESPAWN, which can bring people back to life. All memories intact, all equipment still with, the whole works. If he's got one of those in the bowels of his facility somewhere, killing him won't help at all.'  
  
Suzuka was unconvinced. It was easy to tell.  
'I'm not convinced. If that's so, why not just bust into the place and blow it up?'  
  
'It won't be that simple. That Eya has an evil empire at his disposal the extent of which would impress even the Boardies...and besides, anyone with the firepower readily to hand to down a Type-7 Feltariate with a single shot needs dealing with carefully. Even the four of you together wouldn't be able to sort him out without significant losses, and losses in this situation are unacceptable.'  
  
'I still don't like skulking. And what do you mean by Type-7 whatever?'  
  
'Supernatural entities. Type seven refers to the general classifiacation of 'werewolf' or similar - anything that can shift forms to increase strength, dexterity and so on - under which the Ctarl-Ctarl race in general and Aisha specifically falls. Generally accepted as the third most powerful type, after Types One - deities - and Two - greater demons. Look, I don't have time to give you the full dossier. Just accept that for now a confrontation is unadvisable, until we find out something more about him; his organisation; and his intentions. Then we do whatever's necessary.   
'Above all, it's essential that he doesn't know the crew of the Outlaw Star are investigating him - all he knows at present is that he killed a catgirl and that an armoured individual stole the body from him, and I'd like to keep it that way. He has sufficient power and influence to inconvenience us all very badly, both directly and indirectly, and so if we lose the element of surprise we could all be in severe tro-'  
  
Gene Starwind chose that moment to reenter the ship, grinning triumphantly.  
  
'It's not a problem at all! I went down there just now and sorted him...'  
  
I closed my eyes in gloomy prophecy of what was coming next.  
  
'...with a caster shell.'  
  
Hell. Bloody, bloody hell. 


	4. Chapter 4 Figure in Black

Deep in the dark depths of the deepest, darkest lab of a certain Dark Organisation (TM), a machine whirred into ominous life. Lights illuminated in sequence along its sides while others twinkled a sixties' pattern across readout panels, the activity from the device increasing by the moment as a percentage bar climbed slowly from the zero mark.   
  
The contraption was about seven and a half feet tall, and cylindrical. Wires and tubes burst from the top in a tangled confusion of technological herpeticism that would have warmed the heart of the bastard offspring of Medusa and H. R. Giger (although that particular universe was some distance away). The aforementioned lights appeared as gateways to a stellar core when active, and as gateways to an event horizon when darkened - the twinking reminding onlookers of missile duels in a nighttime desert, of cluster bombs spreading eternal peace in a wide slash across unknown lands, of point-defense lasers carving through the hull of some dark capital ship from fleets beyond mortal ken.  
  
Others just glittered, but let's not spoil the melodrama.  
  
Something about the way the black tube (protrusions of uncertain application which unfolded from the rear of the cylinder, lights flashing faster as the bar reached the halfway mark) glistened under the sodium lighting of the laboratory made the few technicians present turn away in sick revulsion - it seemed to be made of a substance denied being organic at the last minute. Only one dark figure stood unfazed by the RESPAWN device as it reconstructed its master from the pattern stored in its database and from his recent thoughs, a figure standing in a black suit of combat armour looking for all the world like that of Drax Elite molTare Erda.  
  
The dark one was looking at the pipes on the crown of the machine, albeit only insofar as his gaze inside the faceted helmet was directed that way rather than any other. He, however, was focusing on things rather different to and more important than the bundle of wire and tubing.  
  
'Erda...'  
  
At that moment a noise from the RESPAWN point caused the ominous figure to look around, sparing his terrified and unwilling audience of techies a rambling, bitter and self-pitying internal monologue. And there was much rejoicing. The noise which had snapped the obsidian observer out of his approaching rant was a bleep from the cylinder some few feet away, followed by a jet of steam venting from the centre of the machine's top. Glancing at the readout panel where the progress bar had been, he read the single word, 'Complete'. His eyes flicked across to the door of the machine as it opened and the Lanreau stepped out looking decidedly ill. He spoke, the words shockingly loud in the sudden quiet.  
  
'Welcome back to the land of the living, elf-boy. Dodn't expect you to be trying your new toy so soon - I take it you were somewhat... careless?'  
  
The pointy-eared Eya tried to speak, but failed miserably.  
  
'Having trouble there, elf-boy? Don't worry, it'll pass eventually.'  
  
'Wh.. wh..'  
  
'What's that?' the soldier grinned mercilessly, 'Speak up, I can't quite make that out. Something important, elf-boy?'  
  
'Wh.. wh.. WHY DO YE BOTH INSIST ON CALLING ME ELF-BOY?'  
  
'Both? Ah, you would mean Erda... well, he and I are about as different as two people can be, so naturally there are a great many similarities between us. Candidly though, I do it just to irritate you.'  
  
'Aye, so a'thought.' The resurrected party had regained his composure somewhat. 'So who were the three as attacked me today? 'Course, a ken well that hellcat Clan Clan, an' a reckon the git that blew m'head off might ha' been Starwind if the tales speak true, but who was the walkin' fortress wearin' the same armour as you?'  
  
'That would be the reason I'm here. He is molTare Erda, and I'm helping you ensure he fails. then, I shal hunt him down and kill him and kill him and kill him until he dies; then when he is dead... I shall kill him some more! Bwahaha!'  
  
'Oh aye. Friend o'yourn, then.'  
  
'Oh, yes. A friend. A very old friend. Now, to work. Let's use the might of your evil empire to seriously inconvenience the newly-expanded crew of the Outlaw Star...'  
  
As the two walked from the lab, the strange Drax-armoured one turned to look at the silent RESPAWN point.  
  
'You know, I might just put Erda's pattern into that machine, and kill him a few times a week every week of my life. You know what they say, after all: revenge is a dish best served repeatedly...' 


	5. Chapter 5 Aisha ClanClan

It lives! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Legion of Falling Stars is back once more, after a very long period of time during which I, quite literally, lost the plot. I found it while leafing through a few old notebooks several weeks ago, and then academic considerations struck me full in the face. Hooray for university; how would I occupy my time otherwise? /dark sarcasm. Well, enjoy this double foreboding, and feel free to say rude or pleasant things about my writing as strikes your fancy.  
  
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Aisha awoke. The first thing she noticed was pain: she analysed it as non-lifethreatening and therefore beneath her contempt. The second, that she was once more in the temporary offices of Starwind and Hawking Inc., the mostly-legitimate JoAT business of her temporary allies - and finally, the third, that the man who had saved her life sat scowling at the wall over her low futon bed, once again idly toying with the torc that encircled his neck.  
  
'Who are you?'  
  
'I'm the man who saved your life; quiet, please, I'm thinking.'  
  
Mildly taken aback by such a cavalier dismissal, she fell - quite uncharacteristically - silent. Covertly, ears twitching, she studied the brooding man. He looked unremarkable, looked like any other member of his upjumped-monkey race, apart from his eyes. They were, she noted with some approval, cat's eyes - eyes worthy of the large felines of the Terran homeworld or even of a Ctarl-Ctarl - and even bore a fiting hint of an expression of barely-contained anger. He was muttering to himself, about things she in all her years of experience had never heard: 'Respawn points', 'manasink fields', and 'kinetic compressors', and lists of unfamiliar terms which might well have been names...  
  
'...don't have RESPAWN technology, so it has to be Boardie, or Drax, or Kirith. And whoever it was had to bring it here, which rules out the Kirith since they can't Worldcrawl between universes. And I'm the only Drax here, according to Central, which would suggest that it has to be a Boardie. Unless... oh, no...'  
  
It was intolerable! He was ignoring her, her, Aisha ClanClan, as if she were someone ordinary! Clearly, she had to say something incisive and cutting at once.  
  
'Saved me?' damn!...  
  
'Yerss, if you remember, you only had half a lung left when we first met? As I recall, you were really quite close to continuing your existence as a fireside fur rug in the Castello Elf-boy. Now, Atana, if you don't mind, I'm trying to work out who it is that's currently in need of a righteous kicking. I'm sure Suzuka will fill you in on the extraneous details, such as who I am and what I'm doing in your universe, but it would help me immesurably if you could see your way clear to telling me what in the name of all you find holy you were doing attacking that Scots git in the first place.'  
  
Aisha blinked, several times, in abject bewilderment, and decided to fall back to the more simple issues.  
  
'Did you just call me a Tana? What is that, some kind of insult?'  
  
Ah, it was good to fall back to the more simple issues when events were running away from you. She puffed out her fur slightly, looking - had she known it - like an angry housecat, only to subside again at a mild rejoinder from the black-clad figure.  
  
'Atana. Means 'warrior', or more rightly 'warrioress', in a language more copyrighted than you can possibly imagine. It was intended as a compliment, so don't get bitter.'  
  
He sighed.  
  
'Alright. The point is that the little pointy-eared gimboid that shot you took a number seven caster shell to the chest courtesy of everyone's favourite shoot-first-ask-questions-never Outlaw not more than an hour ago, and was seen some twenty minutes later strolling down to the cornershop for a packet of fags and a Daily Mail.'  
  
'Wha...?'  
  
'Fine, I lied about the cornershop. But an undeniably dead Eya baron is now undeniably alive once more, which can only happen through some decidedly advanced technology which - I can fully assure you - is unavailable in any part of this universe. Hence, someone must have brought it here. And since Central always knows every extrauniversal movement that takes place, they know who this person is. And they didn't bother to tell me. Now, I have my suspicions. But it might help somewhat if you told me why you're tied up in this, so we can find out what this Lanreau and his shadowy ally are after. Yes?'  
  
Aisha considered the situation with her own special brand of results-achieving directness and animal cunning - not that she was an animal, of course, and nobody had better say otherwise! - and weighed up the two conflicting currents of thought. On the one hand, her superiors had entrusted her with this mission, a top secret mission, a mission that could well propel her back into their good graces and (considerably more importantly) into the position held and lost of Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire. As such, she had a duty to reveal it to nobody. On the other hand, of course, her opponent had turned out to be better-equipped than she had expected, and perhaps some help would - she conceded, reluctantly - be a useful thing.  
  
The answer came to her suddenly, brilliant in its simple deviousness. Yes... a compelling thought, and one that was worthy of a towering intellect such as her own! She put it into practice at once.  
  
'I'll tell you what I know, since you did sorta help me out back there...' 


End file.
